Fearzone has a love of comic books, from our illustrious leader's illustrated Johnny Gruesome graphic novel to the regular additions to Comics Zone. But while most of the work looked at so far has modern and clearly horror (and, in the case of Jenna Jameson's Shadow Hunter series, seductively horrible), I'd like to cast your eyes back to 1995. A magical year when the NATO air campaign against Serbia was in full swing, Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise" gave us all a reason to live, and Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon started a blasphemous, mixed-genre comic series that caused the Bible belt to rupture its spleen from sacrilege .

I'm talking about PREACHER.

For five years, Ennis and Dillon created a vicious, madcap, blasphemous story that was part western, part biblical epic, and part horror-comedy. Jesse Custer (note the initials) is a young Texan preacher who becomes the punch line to a cosmic joke: while giving a drunken sermon to his parish, he becomes the hiding spot for a bastard child of an angel and devil named Genesis. The unholy prodigy has no will of its own, but may have power within it to rival God itself. Custer, compelled by his own moral compass, decided to go find God, who skipped town when Genesis was born, and get some answers. He's joined in this quest by his ex-girlfriend, the pistol-packing, one-time hit-woman Tulip O'Hare, and a booze-pounding Irish vampire named Cassidy. Together, they uncover religious conspiracies, the dreaded Saint of Killers, and more bloodshed and mayhem than your last Evil Dead marathon. All of these livened with Ennis' black sense of humour and Dillon's comically realistic renditions of violence (the series has a predilection for showing skin "snapping" when cut which gives the fight scenes a visceral edge).

As Joe Lansdale said in the introduction to the first collection, PREACHER is a horror comic, and then some. There's enough terrifying images and gratuitous violence to keep the slaphappy gore fans sated. But PREACHER also has depth of character and story often lacking in shock-fest comics. The relationships between the main characters grow, change, and come into conflict, just like in a novel. It also stands a lot of horror tropes on its head, particularly through the good-time loving Cassidy, who does not have fangs or dress like a throwaway from an emo-core audience. In fact, one of the funniest scenes in the series is when Cassidy finds himself in a sleepy town and encounters a local vampire ruling a bunch of goth kids like a pre teen god of the twilight. Cassidy, being more Shane McGowan than Lestat, wipes the walls with the bunch of them . . . and sows the seeds of his own suffering later on.

Not to be outdone, Jesse is himself a walking can of whoop ass. He even has the ability to use the "word of god" to compel people to his bidding. Being righteous, he almost never uses it. He's that damn tough, facing down his own childhood demons and the ones haunting his future with haymakers for all. Hey, any guy willing to meet god for pistols at dawn gets my vote for bad ass of the year.

While not as gothically horror as Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, do not deny yourself the dark adventure of PREACHER. If you love Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, Spaghetti Westerns, Grindhouse horror, and the Evil Dead flicks, go to your local comic books shop and tell your dealer to hand over the first volume, post haste. And tell 'em Doc Ridler sent you.

JSR